The EPFL scientists discovered that bile acids can turn fat-storing cells into fat-burning ones. This process is called thermogenesis (literally, "heat production") and it helps maintain body temperature in cold environments.

The human body has two primary kinds of fat--white fat, which stores excess calories and is associated with obesity, and brown fat, which burns calories in order to produce heat and has garnered interest as a potential means of combating obesity.

Genetically modified leaner pigs are on the cards soon. Researchers in china used the gene-editing technology, CRISPR, to create pigs that are less fatty and leaner with more muscle. This could mean genetically modified bacon on the plates.

Researchers have found that the unhealthy fat in the body called “white fat” could be converted to a healthier fat by blocking a special protein. This could help fight the obesity epidemic they speculate. The report was published in the journal Cell Reports.

There's good fat and bad fat in our bodies. The good fat helps burn calories, while the bad fat hoards calories, contributing to weight gain and obesity. Now, new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has identified a way to convert bad, white fat into good, brown fat, at least in mice.

Researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the University of North Carolina have managed to devise a microneedle skin patch that could locally treat both obesity and diabetes. As of now it has been used to treat mice in the laboratory and shown promising results.

Immunosuppressive regulatory T-cells play an important role in the functioning of adipose tissue. This is the discovery of scientists from the Helmholtz Diabetes Center at Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich.

Scientists have been trying for years now to understand what causes overweight and obesity in some but not in others. Now researchers at the Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute seem to have solved the puzzle that has been baffling them all – a so called “fat switch” in the brain that regulates weight gain. This could also mean a new potential for treatment of obesity in future. The study appeared in the journal Cell Metabolism today.

Experiments conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, suggest that the odor of food has a direct link with how the body processes the calories. The new study conducted on mice published in the first week of July in the journal Cell Metabolism implicates that the ability to detect the smell of food is related to whether the calories are burnt rather than stored.

As we bask in the summer heat, it is easy to take for granted that humans are also prepared for the cold of winter, with overcoats in the closet and home heating systems ready to be fired up as an added assurance against falling temperatures.

When it gets cold around you, your body turns up the heat to maintain its normal temperature. The heat is produced by brown adipose tissue, or brown fat, which also plays a role in how the body uses glucose and fat.

Brown fat is a tissue well studied in small mammals, where it acts as a heat-producing organ to stay warm in a cold environment. Its unequivocal identification in adult, healthy humans about a decade ago is of major importance due to its immense capacity to convert chemical energy into heat

STReM stands for Super Time-Resolved Microscopy, and as STORM, PALM, and other methods are designed to improve spatial resolution of optical microscopy, we desire to improve the time resolution. STReM makes use of point spread function engineering to encode fast events into each camera frame.

Lisa G. Lawson has over 25 years’ experience in supporting large and small pharmaceutical companies in contamination control, including cleaning and disinfection strategies, aseptic manufacturing and use of risk-based approaches to microbiological quality challenges

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